Rick Larsen Questions Transportation Sec. Buttigieg On Federal Grant Process Innovations

3 months ago

On Thursday, Rep. Rick Larsen (D-WA) questions Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on the federal grant process innovation project during a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing.

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Transcript

00:00Before we begin with members' questions, I do want to flag that we anticipate two

00:05vote series today. The first one's starting at 1030, and the Secretary has a hard stop,

00:12so what I'm asking is let's be respectful of the Secretary's time and try to keep our questions

00:17to five minutes. Stay underneath our rules. So with that, I'm going to turn to Ranking Member

00:26Larson for opening questions. Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for coming today. I appreciate it.

00:32There's a lot of math out there in terms of how much you've spent, how much hasn't been spent,

00:38what's going on. By my math, we're about 52.8 percent of the way in terms of timeline to

00:44September 30th, 2026. Also by my math, the DOT has distributed about 48.1 percent of the dollar,

00:52so pretty close, not exact, but pretty close, almost half and a half. Can you talk a little

00:57bit about some of the challenges you've had getting dollars out the door and what you've

01:00done to address those challenges so communities can benefit from the dollars in the BIL?

01:04Thank you. Yes, as you noted, we are more or less right in the middle of the five-year life of this

01:09authorization, and as depending how you measure, but by the most basic measure of funds flowing

01:15out, we've made roughly half of the funding available. As you know, our funding works

01:20typically on a reimbursement basis, which means not only do we have to announce an award, but

01:25there needs to be an agreement making clear that federal requirements have been met for that

01:30project, then the project sponsor needs to undertake it, and then the dollars can be fully

01:34outlaid after obligation. But we've been trying to work within that to try to create flexibility

01:39where appropriate with tools like pre-award authority so that work can begin if, again,

01:45appropriate and if the right checks and balances are there. We want to make sure that process is

01:50never a barrier to things getting done. There are a lot of challenges along the way. The complexity

01:56of the projects, supply chain and workforce challenges given the enormous volume of work

02:02that we're doing, and while the overall number from the best data that I can gather, the overall

02:08number of projects delivered now is on par with what we would have seen at this point in a previous

02:13administration. We really want to accelerate and compress the timelines, especially the time

02:18between an award announcement and a grant agreement. We've stood up teams that I personally

02:23engage with and do a great deal of work under the hood to try to speed up those processes.

02:27Are there specific actions that you can outline for us that you have taken with regards to that

02:34process? Yeah, I would point to the center of excellence that we have established on project

02:40delivery. We brought some of the best talent and some of the best data that we have to try to get

02:46that done. We've used steps like programmatic approaches and sometimes combined NOFOs in order

02:53to have less red tape and fewer steps associated with the same number of projects. We've also

03:00undertaken a new level of technical assistance with our grant sponsors because often it's the

03:06first time that they've done a federal grant of this magnitude, especially the rural and tribal

03:12communities that we've been working with. And so through both structured programs like the Thriving

03:17Communities Program and just our running capacity for technical assistance, we're standing side by

03:22side with our project sponsors. The instructions I've given to our team is even if the delay in

03:28some federal process is coming from the state or the county or the city not yet being ready

03:32with something, we should take ownership of that. We should take responsibility for that, not just

03:37say it's your problem, you fix it. We're going to be side by side with you, helping you navigate

03:41these processes, even while we're working to make them simpler on the front end, which begins just

03:46with my quest to get NOFOs below 100 pages, which was not the norm we inherited.

03:52But it's just one small example of what we're trying to do to make this a more user-friendly

03:56federal grant process. Thanks. Can I move to rail safety? And now that the NTSB had their hearing

04:06Tuesday, the report is out. I think we're briefed tomorrow morning on the report, if I'm not

04:10mistaken, here on the committee. Has the department looked at specific actions, legislative actions,

04:17that we need to take versus any regulatory actions that the department can take? We've undertaken a

04:23number of regulatory actions, but of course are assessing the recommendations that have been made

04:28public, even though they haven't been formally transmitted yet to us as a department, to make

04:33sure that we're doing everything we can within our existing regulatory authority to keep freight

04:39rail safe. But the reality is, while we're going to keep doing everything we can short of an act

04:44of Congress, it's going to take an act of Congress to give us some of the tools that we need.

04:49I would point to two things in particular that I think are important that are contemplated in

04:53the bipartisan legislation that has been put forward and that we urge this committee and this

04:58chamber to act on. One has to do with increasing the statutory caps on fines to put more teeth

05:06in our enforcement. Right now they're capped in the neighborhood of $220,000, which just isn't

05:12that much to a multi-billion dollar corporation. Another thing I would point to is the acceleration

05:18of the adoption of DOT-117 tank cars, which the FAST Act set at 2029 later than what the

05:25department had planned on previous to that congressional intervention. My understanding

05:30of the information that's been made public by the NTSB is if those tank cars had been in use,

05:35what happened in East Palestine might not have. Thank you.

Rick Larsen Questions Transportation Sec. Buttigieg On Federal Grant Process Innovations

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